John Dudley: Walcavich's retirement is basketball's loss

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PSAC PLAYOFFS The Gannon women's basketball team falls to Bloomsburg in the PSAC championship game. 4C

Greg Walcavich seldom gave a short answer to any question. He never gave a boring one.

In the world of the recycled, politically correct sports sound byte, Walcavich was the iconoclast who almost always said exactly what was on his mind.

"It's hard for me to coach people I don't like," Walcavich, who retired Thursday after 24 seasons as Edinboro's men's basketball coach, once said. "I have done that earlier in my life ... I do everything I can now to not even find those people."

Many will remember Walcavich for his successes on the court, and rightly so. There were many.

He won 430 games at Edinboro, 584 overall in 40 seasons. His 1997-98 PSAC championship team probably was his best, posting a school-record 26 wins and reaching the NCAA East Region semifinals.

But I'll remember Walcavich for the more private moments after games or on off days, when his dry wit was at its most homespun and his keen observations at their sharpest.

"It's no sin to step in a pile of poop," he said after a particularly bad loss. "It's a sin if you stay in it."

His teams never stayed in it for long, largely because of Walcavich's unsurpassed knack for squeezing every ounce of talent and effort out rosters that were never the most decorated in the conference.

For my money, his crowning achievement was Jakim Donaldson.

To say Donaldson arrived at Edinboro as a project is to offend other projects. Donaldson was so raw, so gawky coming out of Oliver High School in inner city Pittsburgh that virtually no one gave him a sniff.

Walcavich did, sticking with him as he became the PSAC's best player, finishing as the only player in program history with 1,000 career points and 1,000 career rebounds.

"No one wanted him out of high school," Walcavich once said of Donaldson. "I know some people wondered what we were doing keeping him."

Similarly, Walcavich gambled on the talented Kenny Tate after hearing that Tate had lit up former NBA player Al Harrington for 31 points in an AAU game.

Walcavich plucked Tate from a Philadelphia playground and he turned into a superstar, with high-flying dunks and a career double-double average in points and rebounds.

Of Tate, Walcavich once quipped, "There are some plays he makes where the only thing I had to do with it is I helped get him here in the first place."

It was vintage Walcavich, self-effacing to the last, even though the rest of us knew better.

He would often begin statements by saying, "Now, I'm not the smartest guy in the room ..." But he usually was.

A communications major at Rutgers, Walcavich understood the journalist's craving for fresh, insightful information. And for a coach unafraid to wear his feelings on his sleeve.

He preferred to refer to California (Pa.), the Scots' sometimes haughty PSAC rival, as "the Harvard of the Monongahela."

When word began to circulate that the PSAC would extend an invitation to local private schools Gannon and Mercyhurst, Walcavich made it clear what he thought.

"If you're asking me if we can continue to compete, the answer is yes," he said. "If you're asking me if we can continue to be a good basketball program, the answer is yes. If you're asking me if our life is better, no."

The late sports columnist Red Smith said writing is easy -- you just open a vein and bleed onto the page.

Walcavich coached the same way. And he seemed to bleed the most for players who beat long odds to get on the court.

Former Edinboro guard Danny Walsh, who overcame a series of injuries and eventually had a hip replaced, received some of his highest praise.

"Sometimes graduation is a happy time because, quite frankly, some players you're happy to see leave," Walcavich said. "And then there are guys like Danny Walsh. You want what a Danny Walsh gives you every single year -- forever. You need guys like him in your program. He is one tough hombre."